Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

How it looks: The silver version of this drive has a brushed aluminum front with rough etched Seagate logo, rest of the drive case is plastic. It is the same silver as a macbook but since it is brushed instead of powder coated it catches a lot more light. Not unattractive. Thankfully the LED light is white and pulses rather than WD's annoying blue led flicker, the thin white light goes off when not used for awhile. Sizing: Compared to an iPhone 5 the Seagate Slim USB3 500GB drive is a little bit thicker (~2-3mm), shorter length wise (~1cm) and wider width wise (~2cm). Speed: This drive uses a standard blue USB 3 cable (included) that is backwards compatible to USB2 meaning that you can plug it into any Mac or PC. Thunderbolt drives are the fastest, but this drive isn't compatible with Seagate's Thunderbolt adapter. USB 3 is fast, but if you connect it to a Mac that doesn't have USB 3 support it will run at the very slow USB 2 speed (ie long file copy times). Unlike PCs which use a blue USB port to indicate USB 3 compatibility a Mac doesn't easily tell you if it is USB 3 or USB 2. You'll have to look up your model specs by going to the Apple icon, choosing about this Mac, more info and then googling your model number for details (surprising this isn't made easier, but any Mac model made earlier than mid 2012 probably doesn't have USB 3 support). It shows up in the Mac finder as "Seagate Slim Drive" with an Orange USB icon drive. It contains a Mac and Windows installer and 400mb of videos (why they couldn't ship a single higher quality MPEG4 with multiple audio tracks is beyond me). The list of files on the drive are at the bottom of this review. Drive is formatted NTFS and has no support for SMART drive sensors or hardware encryption. If you want to optimize it for a Mac only environment or plan on using Time Machine for backups you will need to launch Disk Utility on your Mac to erase the drive. I chose Mac OS extended (Journaled, Encrypted) because I plan on using it to backup my MacBook Air via Time Machine and don't want anyone finding my drive to be able to access the contents (uses software encryption which is slower than WD's version). It should just take a minute to format. If you get the error message: Disk Encryption. Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn’t unmount disk, then you should make sure to dismount the disk image (drag drive to trash) and try again. You can't be accessing the drive while trying to format it. If you go into Time Machine's preferences you can now add the Seagate drive as a replacement or as an addition. I use my Airport Time Capsule at home and wanted to add this drive as a backup at work so I added both. In the time it has taken me to write this review Time Machine has backed up 7GB of the 72GB needed. Wishing Seagate had a slim thunderbolt drive, but Apple is already onto thunderbolt 2 so I'm feeling a bit behind on this USB 2 only Mid 2011 MacBook Air! Files on the drive are: Seagate Dashboard Installer.dmg Seagate Dashboard Installer.exe SlimIcon.ico Video (folder) en-US (folder) Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video.mp4 Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 fr-FR (folder) Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video.mp4 Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 it-IT (folder) Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video.mp4 Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 ko-KR (folder) Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video.mp4 Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 ru-RU (folder) Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video.mp4 Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 sv-SE (folder) Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video.mp4 Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 zh-CN (folder) Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video.mp4 Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 zh-TW (folder) Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video.mp4 Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4 Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial.mp4